On occasion, users may wish to completely reset an SSD's cells to the same virgin state they were at the time he/she installed the device thus restoring it to its factory default write performance. Write performance is known to degrade over time even on SSDs with native TRIM support. TRIM only safeguards against file deletes, not replacements such as an incremental save.

Warning: Doing so will erase ALL data on the SSD and rendering it unrecoverable by even data recovery services!

Step 1 - Make sure the drive security is not frozen

Issue the following command:

# hdparm -I /dev/sdX

If the command output shows "frozen" one cannot continue to the next step. Most BIOSes block (do no allow) the ATA Secure Erase command by issuing a "SECURITY FREEZE" command to "freeze" the drive before booting an operating system.

A possible solution for SATA drives is hot-(re)plug the data cable (which might crash the kernel). If hot-(re)pluging the SATA data cable crashes the kernel try letting the operating system fully boot up, then quickly hot-(re)plug both the SATA power and data cables.

It has been reported that hooking up the drive to an eSATA SIIG ExpressCard/54 with an eSATA enclosure will leave the drive security state to "not frozen."

Placing the target system into "sleep" (Clevo M865TU notebook) has reported to work as well; this may reset other drives to "not frozen."

The drive is now erased. After a successful erasure the drive security should automatically be set to disabled (thus no longer requiring a password for access). Verify this by running the following command: